Digital Tools for Grant Research | Nonprofits that are looking for funding can benefit from grant management software. You may not be aware, but these systems aren’t just for institutions that give out grants. They can also be used to help you manage your prospective givers. Grant management systems can increase organizational efficiency for institutions on both ends of the spectrum, grant seekers and makers.
Grant research is hard work
For organizations that rely on external funding, finding a more effective way to manage grants can be a lifesaver. The grant application process is time-consuming enough, but researching potential grant opportunities is also a serious commitment. However, a successful grant application relies on doing the right research beforehand. And doing good research often depends on having systems in place that make it easy to do. There’s a lot of information to cover and document for your records. If you don’t keep good documentation, you could end up going after a bad lead and wasting your time.
Grant research has two parts when you break it down. First, you need to find granting institutions. Then, you need to go deeper and find out what organizations they’ve funded in the past and what size grants they distributed. All of this information adds up quickly and organizing it effectively is an additional challenge you just don’t need. As Techsoup puts it, researching grants requires ingenuity and strategy that software can’t supply. What digital tools can help you with is organizing your data in a user-friendly format, which saves you valuable time.
Stay organized with grant management software
Many organizations have ways of managing this data related to grant-making institutions (digital tools), such as making prospect worksheets or using spreadsheets, according to Grantspace.org. While materials like this are a step in the right direction, they can be inefficient and prone to error. Cloud-based grants management, on the other hand, helps you keep the basic information in one location, from the subject focus of the grantmaker to the total assets they have available to give out. These materials can help you determine if the institution is really a good match.
Having the right technology can have a serious impact on these procedures by allowing you to store all the data you need in a central system that’s easy to use and access. You can log in and quickly see all the relevant information with just a few clicks, from application deadlines to previous application records. While spreadsheets can be one step in the right direction for organization grant research, grant management software can really ease the burden of dealing with files.
